Is Honoring the Twelve What Makes You a True Hellene?

From time to time one occasionally encounters the claim that the Dodekatheon or Cult of the Twelve Gods should be considered the defining norm of Hellenismos. According to the more ardent supporters of this view, anyone who does not give pride of place to the Twelve and puts greater prominence on others (be they “foreigners” or simply the “lesser” gods of the Greek pantheon) is in danger of having their status as a “True Hellene”^TM being revoked.

My response when I first saw this was to spew Diet Coke all over my computer screen as I was racked with a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The second time my response was to wonder why people devote so much time to worrying about what others believe or do with their religious lives. I mean, seriously, don’t these folks have anything better to do with their time? Like, you know, looking at internet porn or tracking down obscure 80's videos on YouTube? My third through fifth responses were pretty much more of the same. But finally, after being repeatedly exposed to this, I decided to compose myself and put together a simple refutation of this silly idea, just in case someone stumbled across that crap and didn’t know enough to recognize it for what it is.

So, where to start? I guess it’s worth pointing out that there was no such thing as an absolute Greek pantheon in antiquity. We refer to such because 1) that’s what we were taught in handbooks on Greek mythology as children and 2) it’s easier to conceptualize things that way. But the truth of the matter is ancient Greece was divided into a hundred odd small city-states or poleis including their colonies abroad in Italy, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Each polis was independent of the others and possessed its own laws, customs, religious traditions, and at times even dialects of Greek. (For all of its many faults, the recent film 300 did a decent job showing the differences between Sparta and Athens, to name only the two most popular and influential poleis in antiquity.)

Now, while there were some broad similarities between the poleis and even a few Panhellenic festivals shared in common by all Greeks, each polis had its own temples, festivals, patron gods, and specific rites associated with them. We have a number leges sacrae or temple inscriptions that dictate the gods to be honored, how best to honor them, and the times to do so. The interesting thing that comes to light through these is the prominence of local custom. You find festivals and month names derived from them in the inscriptions attested nowhere else in Greece. Also, while many of the big name gods that everyone recognizes are there, their distribution is uneven. Sometimes you’ll find five or six festivals for Dionysos and Zeus – but nothing for Hera or Hermes. And even when a major god is attested you sometimes find a form of them very different from what you see in other parts of Greece. (Think about the differences between Artemis Orthia, who was worshipped with the bloody flagellation of young men versus the Artemis of Mounykhia who helped the Athenians defeat the Persians in a naval battle, and again the many-breasted Great Mother of fertility and vegetation who was honored under the name of Ephesian Artemis – all of which differ from the chaste huntress of Homeric poetry.) Another strong emphasis in these inscriptions is on divinities who have an entirely localized nature. For instance: indigenous gods (e.g. the Kabieroi of Samothrake or Baubo at Eleusis), or heroes and heroines from the city’s history (Theseus in Athens, Ino-Leukothea at Thebes), or nymphs, rivers, and nature spirits who are tied to one particular locality and thus are largely unknown elsewhere. The differences between poleis could be so great that when travelers visited a distant land (even if it was a Greek colony) one of the first things that they did was inquire who the local gods were and what the proper ways to honor them might be. (Scholia on Apollonios of Rhodes 2.1271 ff; Sophokles’ Oedipus at Kollonos)

So, this notion of a Greek ‘pantheon’ would have seemed rather curious to an ancient Greek. While he would certainly have recognized all of the major gods that we include in it, he would have wondered why we didn’t honor our local gods as well, or more specifically, what form of those great gods we dealt with, since Zeus Basileios could differ substantially from Zeus Meilikhios, as the unfortunate Xenophon learned during his expidition with the 10,000. (Anabasis 7.8.4-6.50)

And if we told our ancient interlocutor that we honored the Twelve, he would likely nod his head, as he had probably heard of that designation before – but then his next question would be, “Which twelve do you mean?”

For you see, as with everything else pertaining to Greek religion, that differed from polis to polis.

When we think of the Dodekatheon, most of us have in mind the ‘canonical’ version of art and poetry: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Hermes, Hephaistos, Aphrodite, Athene, Apollon, Artemis, Demeter, and Hestia. Those familiar with the Parthenon frieze might point out that Hestia is sometimes replaced with Dionysos – but more or less this is what most people think of when they consider the Twelve. There was, however, a great deal of fluidity when it came to who was counted among their number in antiquity.

For instance, Plato in the Laws 828 connected the Twelve Gods with the twelve months, and proposed that the final month be devoted to rites in honor of Plouton and the spirits of the dead, implying that he considered Haides to be one of the Twelve. In the Phaedrus 246 e-f he aligns the Twelve with the Zodiac and would exclude Hestia from their rank. At Kos Ares and Hephaitos are left behind, replaced by Herakles and Dionysos. (Gratia Berger-Doer, "Dodekatheoi," in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), vol. 3 (1986), 646-58.) Herodotos (2:43-44) agrees with this and counts Herakles as one of the Twelve, while Lucian adds Asklepios to Herakles as a member of the Twelve, without explaining which two had to give way for them. Pindar (Olympian Odes 10.49) and Apollodoros (1.251), however, disagree with this. For them Herakles is not one of the Twelve Gods, but the one who established the cult of the Twelve by setting up a series of six altars honoring pairs of deities and performing sacrifices to them by the banks of the Alpheios river at Olympia. Thankfully we do not have to guess who comprised the Dodekatheon in this form, for information has come to light at Olympia itself. According to Wilamowitz (Der Glaube 1.329) the Twelve Gods included Zeus Olympios, Poseidon, Hera, Athene, Hermes, Apollon, the Kharities, Dionysos, Artemis, the Alpheios River, and the Titans Kronos and Rheia. That’s over half of the ‘canonical’ gods swapped out with other divinities!

Considering that, we must forgive our hypothetical ancient Greek his ignorance when it comes to the matter of worshipping the Twelve. After all, even allowing for divergence when it comes to the identity of the Twelve, this designation was by no means universal. It can be argued that it was fairly widespread. After all, in just that brief sketch above we have found a cult of the Twelve in Athens, Kos, Olympia, and Egypt (since Herodotos asserts that it was a foreign import from there). To this list we might add that it was known even in the Makedonia of Phillip II (Diodoros Sicculus 16.91-94) and was brought to far-off India by Alexander the Great who set up twelve altars for them on the banks of the Hydrapes river (Diodorus Siculus 17.95). But it was by no means universal – and certainly not part of mainstream ancient Greek religion. The cult of the Twelve was rather exceptional, in fact. Some scholars believe that the association of the major Olympians with the Twelve was a rather late and haphazard case of syncreticism, hence why the members are constantly shifting. Originally the Twelve may have been nameless corporate daimones connected with fertility and plagues. (See Guthrie’s The Gods of the Greeks for a fuller discussion of that and its implications for our understanding of Greek religion.) Pausanias, who has left us an excellent record of the religious life of Greece at the close of the Hellenistic era, mentions only a handful of instances where he found altars to the Twelve. Compare that to the literally hundreds of instances where he mentions the temples, shrines, and state-sponsored worship of Isis and Serapis in mainland Greece and one wonders how anyone could argue the centrality of the worship of the Twelve over and above that of “minor” and “foreign” deities – unless one is proposing that no ancient Greek is in fact a “True Hellene”^TM. (Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.)

Now, just to make it perfectly clear, I have no problem with any of the commonly accepted Twelve. I am not proposing that any of them be booted out and more appropriate gods be substituted in their place. Nor am I suggesting that the concept of the Twelve is itself an empty or pointless notion. If it works for you – keep using it! All that I am saying is that criteria like this need to be reevaluated. Too often people try to make themselves look like authorities when the truth is they know precious little about what they’re spouting off about. Anyone who comes up with elaborate rules and definitions for what constitutes “true Hellenism” and suggests that in order to join their little clique you have to forgo worshipping certain deities is someone you should stop listening to immediately. Ask yourself why anyone would act in such a hostile way towards a divinity. Even if it happens to be a god outside of the system – it is still a god, and thus due proper reverence and consideration. How can extending piety and hospitality – the cardinal virtues of our faith – be seen as an act that removes you from the community? At most this can be seen as something in addition to Hellenismos, and should never be seen as something that necessitates the substitution of it. As long as one honors at least some Greek gods and holds to the basic ideas and practices of the religion, they ought to be counted as co-religionists. I will never understand why some people feel the need to be so divisive and exclusionary, and further, how they can justify such a great expenditure of time and energy busying themselves with the inner life of another person. Perhaps I just have too much going on with my own spiritual practice and writing projects to bother. If that makes me a bad Hellenist, so be it. I would rather be a bad Hellenist but a good human being any day of the week.

© 2007 H. Jeremiah Lewis